Expert insights on mobile tools in healthcare
To keep up with contemporary demands, healthcare organizations – and the technology they use – need to provide anywhere, anytime access to clinical applications and information. Mobile tools can provide this access. From bedside charting to secure communication between care team members, mobile devices can greatly enhance workflow efficiency. However, in the highly regulated healthcare industry, it’s critical to implement a mobile access management strategy to ensure clinicians can harness the power of mobile devices without cumbersome passwords and security requirements getting in the way.
Mobile technology and workflow efficiency
Healthcare organizations all over the world are leveraging mobile devices to support clinical care. The capabilities provided by these tools give clinicians more information, more flexibility, and more efficiency – all of which improve patient care and reduce clinician burnout.
In a recent Becker’s Healthcare podcast, Imprivata’s own Dr. Sean Kelly, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Customer Strategy, and practicing ER doctor, said “nurses and other operational key essential staff want to be able to do their work immediately, whether it's charting at the bedside with Epic Rover and other clinical apps like for the EHR at bedside, or if it's unified communications, and getting alerts for critical values or other key messages. All of those use cases are essential, but they have to be workable and usable.”
The challenges of implementing mobile tools in healthcare
While mobile tools are becoming increasingly essential to modern healthcare, they can introduce challenges if they aren’t properly enabled. In the podcast, Dr. Kelly elaborated on cost concerns, explaining, “managing that fleet of devices could be very expensive if, for example, you don't have a way to check in and check out those devices and track them properly.” Further, he said, “some hospitals report upwards of 20% device loss, and that's really expensive if you're thinking about iPhones or Androids at anywhere from $300 to over $1,000 more commonly per device.”
He went on to say, “you really have to have an ability to track devices and monitor where they are in the system, because nurses and EV's and other services often will pick them up in one place and return them and another.”
Other challenges include:
- Driving efficiencies in workflows to ensure clinician adoption
- Device security and patient privacy
- Maintaining and updating a fleet of devices
- User training and education
Overcoming challenges with purpose-built mobile solutions
Luckily, there are mobile access solutions that can help healthcare organizations overcome these challenges. Technologies including remote management tools, easy and secure passwordless authentication solutions, device tracking, features that drive clinician device adoption, automated device provisioning and deprovisioning, and more. The right mobile access management solution should offer control and security, while also optimizing value for maximum return on investment.
“You really want to make sure that as a nurse or an [end user] picks up that phone, it's been completely wiped of all of the prior users’ credentials and information,” Dr. Kelly said, explaining how devices are digitally sanitized between clinician uses to eliminate risks from generic accounts and credential sharing. This is critical for identity security and a key step in personalizing clinician device experiences. “And without the ability to do that, then there's really large vulnerability to security issues and privacy and compliance issues. And so, any good software should be able to do that automatically. Battery health is another big issue, and just device health in general. If there's any problems or if devices haven’t gotten the right software upgrades or security patches, you should be able to understand that remotely with analytics and fix that remotely.”
Implementing mobile tools requires careful planning, and that planning should happen through a careful partnership between IT and clinical. By understanding the needs of clinicians and mapping out workflows before introducing new technologies, organizations can avoid potential obstacles and set themselves up for a smooth rollout.
As Dr. Kelly said, “the compliant solution actually should improve workflows, because it doesn't do any good to lock all these devices down, put passwords in everywhere that you have to, type in on these little screens that aren't meant for that, and lock everybody out. That's very secure, but it's completely unusable.”
Moving forward with mobile tools
Ultimately, the potential challenges of mobile technology shouldn't be taken as discouragement – not when there are mobile solutions purpose-built to address these challenges. “Just like we all use these devices so much more in our personal and consumer lives, mobile can be very effective in our clinical lives too, as long as it's done properly," Dr. Kelly said.
“Any good technologist or security officer will recognize the challenges and leverage things like biometrics or SSO or other platforms like ours, where you can actually monitor and manage these devices en masse and therefore save money and actually stay compliant,” Dr. Kelly shared. “And the workers appreciate it because they can leverage things like password autofill, and suddenly they tap a badge to get into a bank of devices. They get the most charged up, healthy and reprovisioned device with a full battery. And once they start using it… they’re able to get in and do their work and perform what they need to perform.”
By implementing a mobile access management strategy and leveraging passwordless authentication solutions when appropriate, healthcare organizations can strike that crucial balance between security and efficiency.
Learn more
Take a deeper dive into this topic by listening to the podcast episode, Revolutionizing clinical workflows with mobile tech.